Mobile Phone Mind Control

March 31, 2010

Mobile Phone Mind Control

NeuroPhone is the first step toward hands-free phone operation.

A new device from Dartmouth College lets users select and
dial a contact’s phone number just by thinking about it.

NeuroPhone was developed by assistant
professor of computer science Tanzeem
Choudhury, (a 2008 TR35
winner), professor Andrew Campbell and others. It uses neural signals detected by an
off-the-shelf wireless EEG headset from Emotiv
to control an iPhone. A mind-controlled contact-dialing app flashes photos of contacts–when the user sees the contact she
wants to call, a specific signature of brain activity triggers the system, which
automatically tells the iPhone to dial that person.

In contrast to voice activation or eye tracking, the team says brain-control could allow for easy and silent phone use, and for conveying emotional states to other users. The team showed that the system works more reliably by detecting electrical signals from muscle movement when a user winks to select a contact.

Other computer-human interaction devices based on EEG are used to give vegetative patients a way to communicate, let users play hands-free
video games, and even allow robot-owners to convey messages to Roombas. But while most consumers probably wouldn’t want to walk around with an
EEG-reading headband, if such interfaces become smaller, less intrusive, and cheaper (the one
used in the
experiment was about $300), this sort of device might well take off.